I'm struggling to understand the difference between the verb suffix ～方【かた】 and the noun 方法【ほうほう】. As an example, the difference between 遊び方 (which seems to mean something like "manner in which someone ...

When I was playing a video game a few months ago, I noticed that some of the characters (mostly young teen females, in case it matters) kept saying ～すぎ instead of ～すぎる.
For example, when one of the ...

I have some untranslated mangas that come in pairs of two, and each of them is labeled with 上 or 下 to denote which is the first volume and which is the second. I'm wondering if these labels are only ...

My boss just corrected one of my documents from 企業向きな開発 to 企業向けの開発.
Apart from the の/な problem that I always get wrong, is there a problem with 向き ?
I got it from my textbook that says 子供向きです
Could ...

I've heard this used (also as 寝ぼけんじゃねぇよ！) in informal situations with nothing but smiles all around. But when I tried to use it in an informal situation with a colleague, I got the distinct feeling ...

I've been in Japan for the summer and noticed that the announcement for the closing doors (in the Kansai area, at least) is always 扉が閉まります. However, the equivalent announcement on buses appears to be ...

I am familiar with the set phrase 「言われてみれば」 as a way to say "Now that you say that", but as I examine the phrase further, the phrase structure strikes me as strange. The 〜てみる conjugation is commonly ...

How are とても/とっても, でかい/でっかい, 超 (and others that I have yet to encounter) used differently? I figured that for とても/とっても-type difference is that the double-consonant(geminated) version is stronger i.e. a ...

I found many people say 好きでした when they actually mean 好きです. I think it is short for ずっと好きでした. I know ずっと～していた and ずっと～している can well mean the same, but I still do not know the nuance between 好きでした and ...

In rather formal situations, when would you use 頂戴します ?
I use いただきます all the time to express the fact of receiving something, but I just heard a colleague using 頂戴します over the phone.
If I understand ...

I often see phrases where Riajuu appears in situations where I think it could be translated to "playboy" without any loss in meaning, following from the context and the Urban Dictionary definition.
...

In many love songs, the singer calls their partner 君 (きみ).
But is this used by couples in real life, as of 2013?
Should this word be considered obsolete, or is it still seeing some use outside of the ...

Sometimes there are situations when you'd like to describe someone saying something, but what exactly he says is less important than the rest of sentence and it can be easily ignored. Or in case when ...

I see the ending ～まい all over the place in the JLPT books and in example phrases but I can't actually think of an example of somebody saying it or writing in an email (from SMS style messages to work ...

I learned from a Japanese friend that ふむふむ could be translated like "oh, I got it", "I see", "I know", or "ok". It could be also in this form: ふむふむ なるほど
But, my sister lived in Japan for 5 years, and ...

My current understanding is that 下りる means to go down, for example, 階段を下りる (Go down the stairs); while 降りる means to get off some form of transport, for example, 飛行機から降りる (Get off from the aeroplane).
...

どのように and どうやって are both question words used to to ask "how" to do something. But what is the difference between them? Actually, it's rare to see どのように in a written text. Can anyone show me how to use ...

When we say "birds singing", there is a positive connotation.
When we say "birds crowing", there is a negative connotation.
"The birds are making some sound" seems to be objective, and thus neutral.
...

In books that I've come across and even in dictionaries, I've seen the word 「好きな」 translated as "favorite". I'm a little confused by this because 「好きです」 normally gets translated as "like", or in my ...